Present day hospital transportation vehicles for injured or ill patients often require the transporting of accessory equipment necessary to sustain the patient. Typically, the accessory equipment is hung from a utility pole through hangar and hook devices. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 3,709,556--Allard et al. The pole, along with the accessory equipment, must then be moved along with the transportation vehicle. Thus, an orderly or other attendant must move the combination in tandem. This is inconvenient at best. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,511,158--Varga et al and U.S. Pat. No. 4,572,536--Doughty. Both of these systems are cumbersome and require a great deal of attention from the orderly during their operation. Thus, it is desirable that means be attained for attaching utility poles to vehicles through a firm and sturdy mechanical connection so that an orderly or attendant is able to devote full attention to the patient. It is greatly desired that such means be amenable to widely varying types of equipment so that one device or system will be effective for attaching varying types of poles or other objects to the vehicles. This would facilitate safe and efficient transportation of the patient and his life-sustaining accessories in emergency situations with disparate equipment.
While such approaches have been tried in the past, they have not met with wide acceptance. A long-felt need for efficient clamping systems thus still exists. A typical prior approach has been to provide a female mounting sleeve attached to a wheelchair and a male extension attached to the intravenous pole. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,511,157--Wilt, Jr. The two parts are then fitted together and secured by a threaded screw. This provides an unreliable mechanical connection which requires too much time and effort to perform. It does not provide the desired flexibility to use the clamping means to secure different size utility poles interchangeably. This arrangement also requires an orderly or attendant to divert considerable attention away from the patient to perform this function. Furthermore, utilization of a threaded screw clamp is unreliable because of the tendency of the threaded screw to loosen as an orderly or attendant rapidly moves the patient throughout the hospital in the quest for emergency medical care. A device which utilizes a threaded screw clamp to secure a utility pole to a patient transportation vehicle is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,431,206--Pryor. The method of securing utility poles to patient transportation vehicles disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,431,206--Pryor is cumbersome and inefficient.
Therefore, there is a continuing need in this art for a clamping system for reliably connecting rollable devices such as hospital utility poles to wheeled vehicles such as patient transportation vehicles. This need requires a clamping means which allows fast and efficient attachment of, for example, utility poles of variable size and which can be used with different types of hospital transportation vehicles. Means for attaching utility poles of variable size has been disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,190,224--LeBlanc et al. However, the device therein disclosed utilizes a threaded screw clamp to adjust a pair of substantially perpendicular plates to secure the utility pole and is therefore inefficient and cumbersome and does not fulfill the long-felt need for a utility pole clamp that secures a utility pole to a patient transportation vehicle in an expedient and efficient manner. Cam means to secure a child's toys of various sizes to a chair has been disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 442,629--Lipscomb. However, the device described therein does not disclose a means for attaching rollable devices such as utility poles to vehicles such as patient transportation vehicles and does not satisfy the long-felt need present in the field today to accomplish this task.